"The Welcome," says Mr. Burn, "it may be inferred, was placed in the interior of the room; so also, above the fireplace, were the Rules of the Club, said by early writers to have been inscribed in marble, but were in truth gilded letters upon a black-painted board, similar to the verses of the Welcome. These Rules are justly admired for the conciseness and elegance of the Latinity." They have been felicitously translated by Alexander Broome, one of the wits who frequented the Devil, and who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poetical sons. Latin inscriptions were also placed in other directions, to adorn the house. Over the clock in the kitchen, in 1731, there remained "Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibes iterum, et fuerit medicina." Aubrey reports his uncle Danvers to have said that "Ben Jonson, to be near the Devil tavern, in King James's time, lived without Temple-barre, at a combemaker's shop, about the Elephant and Castle;" and James, Lord Scudamore has, in his Homer à la Mode, a travesty, said—

"Apollo had a flamen,

Who in's temple did say Amen."

This personage certainly Ben Jonson represented in the great room of the Devil tavern. Hither came all who desired to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben." "The Leges Conviviales," says Leigh Hunt, "which Jonson wrote for his Club, and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he undoubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 'Insipida poemata,' says he, 'nulla recitantur' (Let nobody repeat to us insipid poetry); as if all that he should read of his own must infallibly be otherwise. The Club at the Devil does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. He most probably had it all to himself."

In the Rules of the Apollo Club, women of character were not excluded from attending the meetings—Probæ feminæ non repudiantur. Marmion, one of Jonson's contemporary dramatists, describes him in his presidential chair, as "the boon Delphic god:"—

"Careless.I am full

Of Oracles. I am come from Apollo.

Emilia. From Apollo!

Careless.From the heaven

Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god